The present invention relates to the field of handling equipment of rods and additional devices for the ground drilling; in details, the present invention relates to a parking and automatic handling equipment of drilling rods. The present invention relates also to a drilling machine associated to the above mentioned equipment.
It is known that parking and drilling rods handling equipments are known from the patent EP1158136, which shows a solution wherein a storage of drilling rods comprises containers radially positioned along a circumference arch or semicircle.
However, from the EP1158136 arises some drawbacks.
First of all, the number of rod containers and their storage capacity is limited by the semicircular arrangement; as a matter of fact in this case each sector of containers is arranged in radial direction and all the transversal axis of the containers themselves pass by the rotation centre of the automatic handling arm; for this reason, if the number of the drilling rods stored in the storage is to be increased, the semicircle has to be enlarged.
However, the enlargement of the semicircle is not at all manageable at will; as a matter of fact, with the enlargement of the semicircle, it is also necessary to increase the horizontal excursion of the arm of the handling arm which draws and positions the drilling rods in the containers; the limit is given by the fact that it is reached a determined length of the arm wherein, for reaching the rods in the rod container of the storage, once completely retracted, the arm would hit the container positioned in the diametrically opposed direction.
Is also known, from the patent application U.S. Pat. No. 6,763,898, a multiple lift hoist system for a drilling vessel and use on land. Said system comprises a mast with a top side and a base connected to a drilling vessel, a first and second hoisting device at the top side of the mast; a lift system with a first hoisting device located in a first firing line that manipulates a first drill string and a second hoisting device located in a second firing line that manipulates; a second drill string both hoisting devices move the strings in the longitudinal direction of the mast, and a plurality of cables and winches disposed in the hollow construction to manipulate the position of the first and second hoisting devices relative to the mast so the first and second firing lines are accessible from the outside of the mast.
Secondly, the arrangement for the containers in front of the drilling machine requires that there is free space in front of the well within which the drilling rods are inserted; this arrangement is not possible if the equipment is susceptible of operating on aligned wells (the so-called cluster wells), that is close the one with respect to the other.